Trump Brings His Breathtaking Cynicism to the Gathering of the Unhinged

This is the way Donald Trump was greeted in Washington on Wednesday, when he brought his utterly cynical performing seal act at a rally organized by a claque of extremists in opposition to the deal struck with Iran. (Do you honestly believe that the Libidinous Visitor is on the same page here with Tailgunner Ted Cruz, who spent more than his allotted time at the rally raving about an Iranian electro-magnetic pulse that will cripple the East Coast and kill eleventy zillion people, or with walking gaseous anomalies like Mark Levin? Honky, please.) Anyway, the National Journal, a prominent Beltway daily tipsheet, heralded his arrival.

A hugely in­flu­en­tial lead­er is com­ing to Wash­ing­ton to give the coun­try a ser­mon about its fu­ture. Two weeks later, Pope Fran­cis will be here too. Don­ald Trump, per­haps the cur­rent spir­itu­al head of the Re­pub­lic­an Party, will hit Cap­it­ol Hill on Wed­nes­day for a rally op­pos­ing the Ir­an nuc­le­ar deal, which is cur­rently be­ing de­bated in both cham­bers of Con­gress.

Can we just stop now? It's not cute any more. It's not funny. There is no need to cover every rally, every press availability, every Tweet, every Instagram post, and every passing thought that emerge from under the combover as though the word is coming down from the mountaintop. I'm talking mainly to the cable news networks, but it applies to everyone currently making a living off the 2016 presidential campaign. Donald Trump's campaign for president is a deeply cynical, deeply dangerous exercise in democratic lassitude. It is a campaign for people who don't give a damn. It is a campaign for a country that has abandoned citizenship for spectacle, and a campaign for citizens who'd rather be spectators. It is a campaign of brainless loogies hawked at whoever happens to be in range. The Libidinous Visitor isn't asking the American people for anything except to give him a job and let him do all the work.

His speeches are random collections of buzzwords, free-floating memes, and things he read on Drudge an hour and a half ago. Notice, if you will that, when he talks about murderous immigrants, he always talks about the killing "lovely Kate" out in San Francisco. Does he actually know her last name? (Steinle). Yesterday, in addressing the sweltering crowd on the west lawn of the Capitol, he made a point of saying, "We can talk about the fact that we have four wonderful people over there…and, frankly, they're never going to come back with this group. And I'll say this: if I win the presidency, I guarantee you that those four prisoners are back in this country before I ever take office. I guarantee that. They will be back before I take office because they know that's what has to happen." He doesn't know the American prisoners from a crate of melons but, by god, the Iranians are going to give them up before he takes office because he is Trump and the Iranians know what has to happen. It's all gibbering nonsense, but the people cheered.

(Another highlight: the LV seems to be bothered by the fact that the president refers to Ali Khamenei of Iran as "the Supreme Leader," ignoring, of course, the fact that it happens to be the guy's fcking title. It is precisely like calling old Liz Windsor, "Her Royal Highness." Trump seems to believe that, by referring to the leader of Iran by the guy's actual title, the president has surrendered some important piece of American sovereignty. "It's unbelievable!" he burbled. Everybody booed the president and cheered Trump. Someday I will understand this. Or not.)

How profound the cynicism of this whole enterprise is was on clear display outside the Capitol on Wednesday. While inside the building, an actual debate bounced around the Senate floor, out on the lawn, the Tea Party Patriots – who, as their six-figure president Jenny Beth Martin will assure you, represent merely a spontaneous uprising of people concerned about taxes and the deficit – were sponsoring a design contest for the creation of phantom bogeymen. Besides Cruz and Levin, whose entries were impressive, indeed, there was retired Admiral "Ace" Lyons, who's worried about Iranian missiles being launched from "their base in Venezuela," retired General Jerry (My God Can Lick Your God) Boykin, and Frank Gaffney, the guy who thinks Grover Norquist is a Muslim Brotherhood mole, and who is so completely around the bend that he's back where he started. The boogedy-boogedy flew thick and fast, and the historical amnesia on display was consistently impressive. For example, Levin bellowed that, "Never before has an American president armed our enemies," showing most arrant disrespect for Ronald Reagan ever evinced by a putatively conservative speaker.

My point is this. The Tea Party Patriots are merely rebranded movement conservatism, which is a very cynical thing to do. The rally on Wednesday was an incredible parade of retired military bloodworms, outright grifters, washed-up geopolitical sorcerers, and mutton-witted drive-time radio cowboys. Donald Trump, whatever you may think of him, is none of those. He knows what a festival of fruitcakes he joined on Wednesday. The way you know this is that his remarks did not contain warnings of electro-magnetic pulses or Iranian missiles launched from secret South American bases. There was nary a single mention of Neville Chamberlain. (I considered voting for him for a fraction of a sliver of a millisecond on that basis alone.) He declined to enter a gargoyle in the design contest. The worst he said about the agreement that had brought everyone out on such a miserably hot and humid day was that it was "incompetent," which is the mildest thing anyone called it all afternoon. And then, when he got off the stage, he told a jostling knot of reporters that the Iran agreement was a "done deal" and that the only solution would be to "vote those people out of office." A completely reasonable reaction, but one that would have gotten his head spitted on an iron gatepost if he'd said it from the stage. It was a moment of almost crystallized cynicism.

Most of the people who participated in the rally were sincere. Completely bananas, some of them. Misguided, certainly. But they believed what they were saying. The Libidinous Visitor looked out over the west lawn of the Capitol, off toward the Washington Monument, and he saw a lovely carpet of complete suckers laid out before him. He has less in common with most of them than he does with the Dalai Lama. He knows he's not like the rest of losers whom he followed to the podium on Wednesday, but he's willing to swim in that sewer if he has to, and he will tell you that he always comes up smelling like roses, because he's Donald Trump and you're not.

"We lose everywhere. We lose militarily. We can't beat ISIS. We can't beat anybody. Our vets are being treated horribly. It will change. We will have so much winning, if I get elected."

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